Alabama tries to right season against Ole Miss

April L. Brown/APAnthony Grant and his Alabama Crimson Tide are coming of back-to-back one point losses and will try to right the ship today against Ole Miss.

The mad dash for March begins earlier for those teams least likely to reach college basketball's postseason.

Alabama is there with eight games left in the regular season, but the clock is running on the Crimson Tide's attempts to salvage anything out of a campaign that is now veering toward a troublingly familiar direction.

Consecutive one-point losses to Auburn and Florida dropped Alabama out of the nation's top 100 in the RPI ratings. A drastic turn is needed to try to pull off an NIT bid, much less a shot at the program's first NCAA tournament appearance in four years.

Urgency, however, isn't a quality that suits deliberate, thoughtful Crimson Tide coach Anthony Grant or his current situation.

"I tell the guys, 'There's a process of learning how to win,'" Grant said. "We've got to go through the process. You can't skip steps. We've got to learn that, and sometimes those lessons can be painful. They were painful last week (against Auburn), and they were painful last night (Thursday against Florida). But hopefully with every game, maybe we'll understand a little bit better."

From a national perspective, the best opportunities for Alabama (13-9, 3-5 SEC) to gain ground come against the next two opponents, which have the best RPI ratings of any team the Crimson Tide must still play. Following today's 5 p.m. game in Oxford against No. 25 Ole Miss (16-6, 4-4), Grant's squad visits No. 4 Kentucky (21-1, 6-1) for a Tuesday night contest at Rupp Arena.

It's a stretch that could either make or break Alabama's season.

"Our spirits are up," said point guard Mikhail Torrance, who scored 22 points against Florida Thursday night. "We know we're just as good as any team in the SEC. We don't have any time to be moping around with everybody's head down. We're just going to try to get a 'W' on the road."

After the loss to the Gators, Grant rejected the idea of a moral victory, commenting that the final margin doesn't matter. It's still a loss.

"I guess, for me, I don't take any solace in saying 'OK, we played close,'" Grant said. "We've got to find a way to win."

A strong start to this season has now turned for the Rebels, a legitimate NCAA hopeful who carries a two-game losing streak into tonight's matchup. Arkansas scored an upset victory last weekend at Ole Miss, which then lost at Kentucky during the week.

In each instance, the Rebels were without contributor Reggie Buckner, who was out with a sprained ankle. He could play today but may not be full-strength.

"It's hard for me to believe -- because we've got such tunnel vision -- that we've already played 22 games," Rebels coach Andy Kennedy said. "So now it's February. This marathon that we run is now in the bell lap. It's not a sprint yet, but you better pick up the pace, because there's a lot of magnitude with each game."